{"id":291498,"date":"2025-11-30T14:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T14:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/291498\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T14:01:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T14:01:08","slug":"how-one-movie-changed-helen-mirrens-mind-on-a-hated-genre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/291498\/","title":{"rendered":"How one movie changed Helen Mirren’s mind on a hated genre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Helen<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Sun 30 November 2025 9:30, UK <\/p>\n

What a life Helen Mirren<\/a> has led, and so many memorable parts in an acting career that\u2019s spanned an astonishing sixty years and has seen her play detectives, assassins, three different British Queens and even a villainous immortal Goddess. This year she\u2019s already been in all kinds of stuff, including the final episodes of Taylor Sheridan\u2019s 1923.<\/p>\n

That TV show ran for two seasons, serving as both a sequel and a prequel<\/a> in Sheridan\u2019s Yellowstone franchise, the star-packed global smash that has seen cowboys and the Midwest become the destination of choice for many leading actors over the last five years or so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s something of a surprise that Mirren was involved at all, given she apparently isn\u2019t a fan of Westerns, especially given that when she signed on to play the role of Cara Dutton, the head of the family in the show, she hadn\u2019t even seen a script. As to why she did a 180, she told Rolling Stone:
\u201cI loved Taylor Sheridan\u2019s films. I loved Wind River. I knew that it wouldn\u2019t be the normal kind of Western, the kind that I don\u2019t usually like. Which, I have to say, is an extremely old fashioned idea of a Western \u2014 the sort of 1950s version where the women were either teachers or madams at a brothel, and there was nothing in between. I knew 1923 wouldn\u2019t be like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mirren also admitted that her dislike of the genre doesn\u2019t extend to one particularly bloody example from 2015 starring Kurt Russell and Walton Goggins, though, adding:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI did love the Western that Quentin Tarantino<\/a> did (The Hateful Eight). I thought it was fantastic. That\u2019s my kind of Western, with characters that are incredibly flawed and interesting and violent. You know, the survivalist nature of The Hateful Eight, it\u2019s just incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tarantino\u2019s mystery thriller was originally written as a follow-up to 2012\u2019s\u00a0Django Unchained,\u00a0but in the end, the director decided to have it stand alone from that movie. It tells the story of eight strangers holed up in a cabin seeking refuge from a Wyoming blizzard, each of them with secrets and none of them trusting each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Featuring Ennio Morricone\u2019s final movie score, which finally brought him an Oscar for Best Score at the sixth time of asking, the film has a nigh-on three-hour running time and is packed with violence, some of which proved controversial even for Tarantino as he took flak for the treatment of the sole female lead character.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was Tarantino\u2019s eighth movie and proved to be a moderate success at the box office, while critics were a little more mixed than usual. It was nominated for three Oscars and three Golden Globes, and Tarantino re-released it as an extended four-part series for Netflix in 2019. <\/p>\n

Mirren, meanwhile, has had another busy year with Guy Ritchie\u2019s\u00a0Mob Land\u00a0and the first movie adaptation of Richard Osman\u2019s\u00a0Thursday Murder Club. She also completed work on another film with an ensemble cast, this time Goodbye June, which will arrive on Netflix<\/a> on Christmas Eve this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The story of a broken family coming together to say their farewells to Mirren\u2019s dying character, the movie features the likes of Toni Collette, Kate Winslet, Stephen Merchant and Timothy Spall. Mirren has also completed filming on Switzerland, a new film from Control director Anton Corbijn.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Sun 30 November 2025 9:30, UK What a life Helen Mirren has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,15573,2839,33395,118110,56,54,55,118111],"class_list":["post-291498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-helen-mirren","tag-movies","tag-quentin-tarantino","tag-the-hateful-eight","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-western"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}